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In 1990, actress Julia Roberts played a beautiful Hollywood Boulevard prostitute hired to serve as a companion to a ruthless businessman. One tagline for “Pretty Woman” said; “She walked off the street, into his life and stole his heart.”
How sweet.
In “Risky Business” (1983), Tom Cruise is a Princeton bound suburban boy whose friend sends a gorgeous call-girl to his house. His parents are away and he, cuts loose.
How exciting!
In "Gone With the Wind" (1939), Belle is the obligatory harlot-with-a-heart, ostracized by the decent folk (all except Melanie, of course). Belle is the patriot giving hard earned money for "the cause." She is graceful, though scorned. Rhett Butler, ever the cynic, saves his kindest words for the noble harlot; "You've got a heart, Belle. And you're honest."
In reality, prostitution is not so glorious or noble. The so-called “oldest profession” is the main gateway into crime for women, both as victims and perpetrators. Prostitution reaches deep into the bottomless pits of drug addiction, violence, rape, cheating, incest, unwanted pregnancies, abortion, homelessness, sexually transmitted diseases, despair and death. It drags vast numbers of children into its ugly world. The misery this creates is not entertaining.
Hollywood movies often ignore these lurid aspects to soften up the sin. Or they unveil these pathologies in graphic detail, but minimize the consequent dehumanization. Some wallow in it, presuming their audience to be morally sick. Others tell a story of reform. One way or the other, prostitution is a popular topic in American cinema.
The well-worshipped Greta Garbo had a prostitute past in “Anna Christie” (1930). As a child, she (her character) was sent away by her father who had his own life of sexual chaos to live. What else could a girl do?
In “Midnight Mary” (1933), Loretta Young played an abused orphan who sinks into a life of crime. In a brothel, she meets a young lawyer from a good family who falls for her. But her past catches up with her and she plays the tragic heroine.
In 1934, the “Hays Code” was adopted by Hollywood producers to curtail a perceived slippage into moral chaos. This code affirmed: “The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld. Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing.”
That’s ancient history now. Cinematic history shows that a moral code alone cannot create morality. Over the years, movies always managed to reflect the heart of their makers, moral or not.
In “Primrose Path” (1940), Ginger Rogers played the daughter of a good-hearted prostitute who heroically supports the family while her deadbeat husband wallows in alcohol. Disappointed by love, the daughter turns toward the “family business.” Lies and prostitution are portrayed in sympathetic hues as if to serve as their last resources for survival. Unforgivably, this film abuses a Menander quote about "living not as we wish but as we must." It was neither the first nor last time Hollywood would sympathize with prostitution this way.
Hollywood preaches that poverty causes prostitution but rarely shows how prostitution, in reality, causes poverty and despair. Even the “reform” films are flawed. I’ve never seen a movie in which a woman overcomes prostitution with moral conviction. It always takes romance and a man to pull her out.
Vivien Leigh loses her man to World War I in “Waterloo Bridge” (1940) and sinks into the streets of London. Years later, he turns up alive and love wins out.
Susan Hayward plays a tough, wisecracking prostitute in “I Want to Live” (1958). She gets framed by murderers and tricked by a prosecutor’s plant to tell a fateful lie. There’s no romance or salvation here, just a vulnerable victim with a trusting heart.
In 1960, slick religion sets the stage in “Elmer Gantry.” A huckster salesman applies his style and charm to evangelism and makes another hypocrite out of his angelic counterpart. He is familiar with a prostitute who sets them up for bribery. She goes soft with regret over what she did and comes off quite human (unlike the evangelist).
A fashion designer (Kathleen Turner) leads a double life as a hooker named “China Blue” in “Crimes of Passion” (1984). She is stalked and hounded by a psycho preacher while a another client-suitor falls in love with her amid much sleaze and kink.
Hollywood story-tellers have a hard time conceiving of preachers with kind or tender souls. But most prostitutes depicted on screen have been very pretty, soft-hearted, strong-willed and sympathetic. This is harmful when sympathy spills over into identification. Today, too many little girls imitate celebrities who rose to fame dressing like prostitutes.
“Taxi Driver” (1976) combined an unstable taxi driver obsessed with violence and pornography, a beautiful campaign worker, an underage hooker, a murderous pimp and a senator into a plot that wallowed in sleaze. Yet it inspired a critic to write, “On every street in every city, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody.”
“Pennies From Heaven” (1981) tells a sympathetic story about a schoolteacher turned prostitute. In “L.A. Confidential” (1997), a wealthy developer runs a stable of high-class hookers, all ringers for movie stars.
Even westerns play the game. They often combine heavy sympathy for pretty prostitutes with intolerant hostility for the decent townswomen who stigmatize them. In “Stagecoach” (1939), a prairie prostitute (exiled by the cruel townswomen) is kind and helpful to a distinguished officer’s wife who has her baby while in transit. John Wayne (the Ringo Kid) is magnanimous about her past and sensitive to the stigma others laid upon her.
In “Unforgiven” (1992), a small town combines cowboys, a sheriff and a house of whores all just trying to get by. Two cowboy customers go wild and cut up a young prostitute. Unsatisfied with the sheriff's justice, her loyal cohorts pool their money to put a bounty on the cowboys. This beckons an aging gun-slinger (Clint Eastwood) out of retirement for one last job. Sympathy runs thick for the attractive prostitutes just trying to make a living. For many movie-makers and academics, prostitutes are just “sex workers” earning a living.
In “Monte Walsh” (2003), an aging cowboy (Tom Selleck) develops a tender relationship with a kind prostitute played by the stunning Isabella Rossellini. Her character is affectionate, understanding, soft and selfless. It never seems to bother her cowboy lover that other men share her affections for cash. It doesn’t wash.
God made sex to be a win-win scenario. When a married man and woman experience the fulfillment of their mutual love, both win. Finding love out of life, they find life out of love. A family emerges to enlarge the winner’s circle. This ideal, though increasingly rare on screen, can take root in reality. Sexual perversion, however, turns winners into losers. Prostitution offers a cheap promise of loveless fulfillment that quickly evaporates. It twists a good into an evil.
Don’t let Hollywood’s “ideals” define your reality.
Joel Mark Solliday , B.A., M.Div., is the editor of Campus CrossWalk and the pulpit minister of the Brooklyn Center Church of Christ in Minnesota. A Pepperdine graduate, he later worked in their Campus Life Office and at ACU as a Missionary in Residence. He earned his M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary.
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